Disbarred Lawyer Alex Murdaugh Found Guilty of Murdering His Own Wife And Son

The verdict of one of the biggest trials in South Carolina history has been reached. Alex Murdaugh, a disbarred lawyer, has been found guilty of murdering his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh. Prosecutors will seek life in prison instead of the death penalty for him.

The murders connected to Alex Murdaugh have already been covered by two major docuseries, HBO’s Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty and Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.

This has been an extraordinarily complicated trial. The prosecution has argued that the crime scene was mishandled by investigators in several crucial ways. The defense has argued that there is no direct evidence connecting Murdaugh to the murder of his wife and son.

Adding to the chaos, a juror was removed for discussing the case outside of court the day deliberations were supposed to begin. An alternate juror was used, but it was another wrinkle in this trial full of them. Now the jury has reached its verdict.

The criminal charges for the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh are just four of the litany of charges against the Murdaugh patriarch. As of December 2022, Alex Murdaugh faced 106 grand jury criminal charges ranging from financial fraud to murder.

Murdaugh’s embezzlement and fraud schemes can be traced back to at least 2011. But his misdeeds weren’t fully investigated until around 2019.

In February of that year, Murdaugh’s son Paul was driving a boat full of his friends while intoxicated. He hit a bridge, an accident which resulted in the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach.

Paul Murdaugh was charged with three felonies for Beach’s death, and the ensuing case led to an investigation into Murdaugh’s alleged financial wrongdoing. It only spiraled from there.

While Paul Murdaugh was awaiting trial, he and his mother were killed by gunshot near the dog kennels of the family’s hunting estate. Shockingly, the deaths connected to this family do not end there. In 2015, 19-year-old Stephen Smith was found dead of blunt force trauma in the middle of a road in Hampton County.

The case was ruled a hit-and-run, but rumors pointed to Buster Murdaugh, who was allegedly in a relationship with Smith for a period of time. Then in 2018 Gloria Satterfield, the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper, suffered a severe head injury after falling down the stairs of the Moselle estate — the same property where Paul and Maggie would eventually be killed. Both Smith and Satterfield’s cases have been reopened.